


100% Saturation

by Imwastingmylifeinhere



Category: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Camping, Established Relationship, Fluff, I wasn't planning for there to be any angst in this but i guess there is, Multi, Part of the "More than Myths" fanzine, tw for a brief mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 06:56:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17997041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imwastingmylifeinhere/pseuds/Imwastingmylifeinhere
Summary: With Ragnarok safely averted, Alex Fierro and the gang are going on a much-needed vacation. But what will Alex do when their camping trip brings up memories of her past?





	100% Saturation

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh, I can finally post this! Last year I was invited to be a guest writer for the ["More than Myths" Riordanverse fanzine](https://riordanversezine.tumblr.com/) and now it's finally time for me to share this with all of you. I hope you like this!

What does a group of teenage einherjar do after they’ve stopped the Apocalypse™ by traveling across the worlds on a ship that resembles a banana? 

Why, they go on a vacation, of course.

And, really, when one of those einherjar is Alex Fierro, known outdoors lover, did you really think there was any chance they  _ wouldn’t  _ go camping? Well, if you did, then you obviously don’t know her well enough. Shame on you.

But really, it’s not like they have  much money on them for a fancy vacation anyway. Being an einherji doesn’t pay well. They could have gone on a cruise on the Great Banana, but after everything that happened, none of them want to go near the ocean for a long while. And even if they wanted, Alex and Magnus wouldn’t have let them; they hadn’t gone camping in so long that they were ready to kill anyone who refused them. Well, Alex was. Magnus is too much of a Hufflepuff for that.

Getting permission to leave Hotel Valhalla hadn’t been that hard, especially after they played the we-stopped-Ragnarok card. If Alex had to be thankful for one thing that came from that whole mess it would be the eternal bragging rights. (And okay, maybe dating Magnus hasn’t been that bad, but don’t tell him she said that.)

With Hearth and Blitz staying back to watch over Blitzen’s Best and the Chase Space, the Floor 19 gang plus Sam piled into the minivan Sam had borrowed from some friend of Amir’s and hit the road. The place they chose to go camping was a reasonable distance from the city; close enough that they could get there in a day without driving for hours, yet far enough that they had enough time on the road to eat all the junk food they picked up before leaving and do some horribly off-key karaoke.

That’s what Alex is doing right now, bellowing out the first notes of “Peace Sign”. In the driver's seat next to her is Sam, looking done with the world. She's the only one with a license since the rest of them are  _ technically _ dead.

“Fierro, I swear to all the Gods that exist, if this is another anime song I’m jumping out of this car,” Halfborn threatens from the back next to T.J and Mallory. 

“Be my guest,” she yells back and turns the volume up as the singing starts. From the rearview mirror, she sees Halfborn reach for the door over T.J, almost knocking the chips out of his hands. The ex-soldier pushes back against Halfborn. Mallory grabs the back of her boyfriend’s t-shirt and yanks him back in his seat.

“Let me go, woman. I can’t take this anymore!”

“Oh, shut up. It’s just a song,” Mallory replies. She turns so her back is against the car and puts her legs on Halfborn’s lap to keep him from moving. 

“It’s the twelfth one!”

“It’s not that bad,” T.J says, placating Halfborn with a chip. “I like it.”

“Says the guy whose music selection was made up entirely of army marching songs and Disney,” Magnus pipes up from the second row. He’s sitting like Mallory, expect his feet are on the luggage-filled seat opposite of him instead of on Halfborn’s lap.

Alex stops her singing to turn around in her seat and smirk at her boyfriend. “Maggie, we both know you have a Disney playlist too. I’ve heard you sing ‘Friend like me’ in the shower.”

Magnus blushes and splutters, and Gods, Alex really likes making him flustered. 

“Alex, sit properly right now,” Sam says, one arm pulling on Alex’s shirt while her eyes never stray from the road. “I’m not getting pulled over because you want to tease Magnus.”

“Aw, you’re no fun,” Alex grumbles, but does as she’s told. The song comes to an end soon and she has to sadly give up her place as the DJ to Halfborn. The first song is fine and for the first time in hours, the car is relatively quiet. Sam sighs so loudly it’s almost comical and Alex props her head on her hand as she looks out the window and lets the air hit her face.

This is nice. No monsters. No giants. No stupid mothers sailing on a boat of dead people’s nails to start the apocalypse. Just the open road and sun on her face and a bunch of idiots she doesn’t mind calling  _ her  _ idiots. If she closes her eyes, she can almost see a different person behind the wheel, different people in the back seats. Back when she didn’t know what it’s like to have a sister, back when she hadn’t spent winter nights shivering under bridges, back when going camping was running away, escaping, because things in that house were  _ bad _ , were too much, and she had to get out, out-

“Halfborn, are you freaking kidding me?” Magnus says and his voice brings Alex back to the present. She’s not running away, not now, and the person sitting behind her isn’t a friend that didn’t live to see sixteen. It’s Magnus and Sam is next to her and Halfborn is laughing his head off in the back of the car and – 

Alex whirls around in her seat. “Is that ‘Never gonna give you up’? Seriously?”

“If you’re going to play anime songs then I’ll piss you off with every meme song in existence!” Halfborn declares before going right back to laughing maniacally. Next to him, Mallory is  covering both her ears, Sam is mourning her lost peace and quiet, and T.J is oblivious to it all and singing along.

Yeah. Yeah, this is  nice.

The moment Sam parks the car, everybody rushes to get out like animals kept in a cage for too long. Sure, the drive here was good - sans Halfborn putting Smash Mouth's ‘All Star’ on loop. But this – the sun, the trees, the no people she doesn't like for several miles – this is what she came for.

“We should find a good place to set up our tents-“ Sam says as she and Magnus unload their things from the back of the car. Her words are cut short when Halfborn’s shirt hits her square in the face. 

“Woo hoo! There’s a lake!” Halfborn yells as he takes off running towards the wooden pier at the edge of the water. Mallory is quick to go after him and she grabs him by the hair to stop him before he gets too far.

“OW! What’s your problem, woman?”  Halfborn is bent in half, his hair in Mallory’s grip. Alex would be lying if she said she didn’t find this a picture worthy of museums.

“My problem is that Sam is right. We have to set up our camp first. You can kill all the lake’s fish with your cannonballs afterward.”

Without too much argument, they find  a good spot not too far from the water’s edge and start working. With Magnus and Alex’s camping experience and T.J’s tent-setting skills from the army, their camp is  quickly set up. Their three tents are arranged in a circle with a pit for a fire in the middle. T.J keeps insisting that his marching songs helped them finish faster and Alex honestly doesn’t have the heart to argue with him.

With their home for the next couple of days ready, there was no keeping Halfborn or any of them from throwing their shoes and clothes off and running to the lake. Halfborn, true to Mallory’s words, jumps off the pier’s edge and makes a cannonball big enough to wash half the lake’s population on shore. Mallory jumps in after him, with T.J on her tail, letting out an enthusiastic whoop before he hits the water. 

“You coming, Sam?” Alex asks. Her sister is still fully dressed, though that wouldn’t really stop her from throwing her into the lake if she wants to.

“I need to change first, you go ahead.”

Alex nods and goes towards the pier. Magnus is standing near the edge, Halfborn, Mallory, and T.J splashing around in the water underneath him.

“Come on, Beantown! The water’s great!” Mallory yells. T.J does a little pirouette where he's swimming and Halfborn kicks up a wave of water towards Magnus.

“Yeah! Dive in!”

Magnus shakes his head with a laugh and Alex smirks as she sneaks up behind him. “I’ll just take my time, you-“. The son of Frey never gets to finish his sentence. Alex runs into him and sends both of them toppling into the water below, her arms wrapped around the blonde’s stomach. 

The water engulfs them, flurries of bubbles cool against her sun-heated skin. She lets go of Magnus and kicks up to the surface. His head pops out of the water with a gasp and an indignant cry of “Alex!” and a glare.  His blonde hair sticks to his skull like some weird combination of Draco Malfoy and a wet kitten. He looks adorable.

“Why did you do that?” he asks and he’s really trying to look angry, but Alex can see the corners of his lips tug upward. And even if she didn’t, she finds it impossible to see him as scary when she’s seen him hug his pillow in his sleep.

“You were taking too long to get in,” she says, swimming closer. She pulls a lock of hair out of his face and spikes it up like an antenna. “Plus, I wanted to see if you’d look cute with wet hair. You do.”

The result is immediate. For being the son of a summer god, Magnus is extremely pale so when he blushes, his whole face goes beet red. On top of that, he splutters if you embarrass him enough. Alex had made it her afterlife mission to see if she can kill him by flustering him too much.

“Why do you always do this?” Magnus mutters, sinking to hide  his face in the water as their other three friends whoop and hum ’Silent Whisper’. 

“Because you make it too easy and it’s fun,” Alex smirks and swoops in to peck Magnus on the lips. 

Oh, now his ears are red too.

Before Alex is able to say anything else, Sam nosedives into the water. She comes up with a gasp for air. Her swimsuit looks like a diver’s suit with a dress overtop and a build-in hijab. Its dark green color matches the darker depths of the lake so well she looks like a water spirit. “Alex, what have I told you about teasing Magnus like that?” She says with a teasing air to her motherly tone.

“That I should do it when you’re around so you can laugh?” 

Sam smirks and yeah, you can see the family resemblance. “Exactly.”

“Hey!” 

Halfborn rolls his eyes. His beard looks ridiculous drenched in water, like a wet cat clinging to his face. “If you’re done teasing Beantown, who’s up for some violence?”

A wild gleam appears in Mallory’s and T.J’s eyes. Magnus looks like he's reconsidering the whole trip. Alex cracks her knuckles. “Bring it on, Gunderson!”

‘Violence’, as it turned out, meant chicken-fighting. A few minutes later, with the teams figured out, they gear up for war. It was a couples’ battle: Mallory on Halfborn’s shoulders, Magnus on Alex’s, and Sam – as the only one with a significant other who was not present – on the shoulders’ of the resident aro-ace, T.J. 

“You’re going to die, Gunderson!” Alex growls. Her stance is wide as Magnus adjusts himself on her shoulders.

“Stop moving, I’m gonna fall!” Magnus’s worried cry is punctuated by his thighs tightening around her neck and his fingers trying to tear off her hair as he struggles to stay on.

“Leave the hair-pulling for the bedroom, you two!” Mallory yells as she stretches her arms. There was enough space on Halfborn’s shoulders to fit her and her twin. “This is a war!”

“Yeah!” T.J lets go of Sam’s ankle long enough to pump a fist in the air. 

“Okay, in your places,” Sam says, steady and smirking, “Ready. Set. Go!”

Despite this not being a chicken-fight to the death, it doesn’t stop them from acting like it was. Halfborn charges forward as soon as the game starts, barreling towards them like a bull. Mallory is holding her arms out like they’re the horns and smacks a hand square on Sam’s and Magnus’s chests. T.J staggers backward but finds his balance. Sam is leaning forward, putting all her weight into it as she pushes Mallory backward. Alex’s grip tightens around Magnus’s ankles as Mallory’s force sends them back. They remain standing and Alex smirks.

“Hold on, Maggie!” She yells up at him. Before he can answer, she runs through the water to their friends. They knock into T.J, breaking Sam and Mallory apart. Soon, the three on top are pushing each other while the bottom three are kicking, hitting and splashing water at their enemies.

It is through a well-placed shove (Sam), a kick (T.J) and a ball of spit to the face (Halfborn) that Alex and Magnus go down, falling on top of each other in the hip-deep water. “Eat it, Fierro!” Halfborn manages to roar before T.J and Sam are at them again.

She and Magnus sit in the water and watch their friends go at it. They’re laughing, making bets on who will fall first. If Magnus takes her hand under the water she says nothing. The sun shines brightly above their heads, well past noon, creating shifting patterns on the lake’s surface as it filters through the trees, and suddenly it’s like someone turned the saturation to 100%. The sky seems bluer, the water feels cooler and her friends’ laughter rings out in her ears. Her heart feels warm inside her chest, and it’s too much, like it was earlier in the car, but this time-

It’s good. It’s great, amazing,  _ wonderful _ and even with Kvasir’s mead she probably wouldn’t be able to describe it adequately. Alex has always heard that “it gets better”, but after her grandpa’s death and everything that followed it, the words sounded empty. Now…

Magnus’s fingers rub circles on her knuckles. “Alex?” he asks. “Why are you smiling like that?”

“Fierro, Beantown!” Halfborn calls out to them, Mallory standing next to him after she’d fallen in the water. Sam is still on T.J’s shoulders, both of them smiling victoriously. “Get back here so we can teach these guys a lesson!”

Alex leans over to give Magnus a swift kiss. Her cheeks hurt from smiling but she doesn’t really care to stop. “Just thinking that dying was probably one of the best things to happen to me.”

Now… now the words finally feel  _ true _ .


End file.
